2. As the science of all sciences, the science of knowledge is to furnish to all sciences their fundamental principles. Hence, all propositions, which are fundamental principles of the particular sciences, are at the same time inherent propositions of the science of knowledge; and thus one and the same propositions may be regarded both as a proposition of the science of knowledge, and as the fundamental principle of a particular science. The science of knowledge evolves from the same proposition further deductions; and the particular science whereof it is the fundamental principle also evolves from it further deductions. Hence, either the deductions of both sciences are the same—and then there is no such a thing as a particular science—or both sciences have a distinct and peculiar mode of deduction; and this is impossible, because the science of knowledge is to furnish the form of all sciences; or something is added to a proposition of the science of knowledge, which something must, of course, be derived from the same science, whereby it becomes fundamental principle of a particular science. Here the question arises: What is this which is added? or, since this additional is to frame the distinction, what is the definite boundary between the general science of knowledge and every particular science?
3. Again, the science of knowledge is to determine the form of all sciences. How this can be done we have shown above. But another science, under the name of logic, pretends to have this same object. Sentence must be passed upon the claims of both sciences, that is, it must be decided how the science of knowledge is related to logic.
4. The science of knowledge is itself a science. What it is to accomplish as such we have shown above. But in so far as it is a mere science, a knowledge, in the formal significance of the word, it is a science of a something; it has an object, and it is clear from the above that this object can be no other than the system of human knowledge generally. The question arises: How is the science of knowledge, as science, related to its object as such?
The hitherto true or imaginary human knowledge is not human knowledge generally; and, though a philosopher had really exhausted the former, and shown by a perfect induction that it were contained in his system, he would yet by no means have satisfied the task imposed upon philosophy; for how could he prove by his induction from present experience that in the future some discovery might not be made which would not fit into his system?
Quite as unsatisfactory would be the excuse that he only intended to exhaust the knowledge possible in the present sphere of human existence; for if his philosophy is only valid for this sphere, he clearly confesses that he knows no possible other sphere, and hence, also, not the limits of that sphere which his philosophy claims to exhaust. Hence, he has arbitrarily drawn a limit, the validity whereof he can only prove by past experience, and which may, therefore, be contradicted by any possible future experience even within his own posited sphere. Human knowledge generally is to be exhausted, signifies: it is to be absolutely and unconditionally determined what man can know not only on the present stage, but on all possible and conceivable stages of his existence.
This is only possible if it can be shown, firstly, that the accepted fundamental principle is exhausted; and, secondly, that no other fundamental principle is possible than the accepted one. A fundamental principle is exhausted when a complete system has been erected upon it, that is, when that fundamental principle necessarily leads to all the propositions deduced from it, and when, again, all deduced propositions necessarily lead back to it. When no proposition occurs in the whole system which could be true if the fundamental principle were false, or false if the fundamental principle were true; then this is the negative proof that no superfluous proposition has been accepted in the system; for the superfluous one, which did not belong to the system, might be true though the fundamental principle were false, or false though the latter were true. When the fundamental principle is given, all propositions must be given. Each particular one is given in and through the fundamental principle. This connection of the separate propositions of the science of knowledge proves that the science has the required negative proof in and through itself. This negative proof shows that the science is systematic, that all its parts are connected in a single fundamental principle.
Again, the science is a system, or is completed, if no further proposition can be deduced; and this furnishes the positive proof that all the propositions of the system have been admitted. Still, of this there must be other evidence; for the mere relative and negative assertion, I do not see what other deductions might be made, is not sufficient. Some one else might arise hereafter, and see what I did not see. We need, therefore, a positive proof that no other propositions could possibly follow, and this proof can only arise if the same fundamental principle from which we started shall also show itself to be the final result; since, then, we could not proceed without describing the same circle we should have already drawn. When the time comes to represent this science, it will be shown, also, that it really describes this circle, leaving the student precisely at the point from which it started, and thus furnishing also the second positive proof in and through itself.The science of knowledge has absolute totality. In it one leads to all, and all to one. But it is also the only science which can be completed. Completion is, therefore, its distinguishing characteristic. All other sciences are infinite, and can not be completed, for they do not return to their fundamental principles. This the science of knowledge has to prove for all other sciences, and show up the ground of it. But although the fundamental principle be exhausted and a complete system erected upon it, it does not follow that thereby human knowledge generally is exhausted, unless we presuppose what ought first to be proven, namely, that this fundamental principle is the fundamental principle of human knowledge generally. Of course, nothing can be added or taken away from the completed system which has been erected; but why might not the future, through augmented experience, cause propositions to arise in human consciousness which can not be grounded upon that fundamental principle, and which, therefore, presuppose one or more other fundamental principles? In short, why could not one or more other systems coexist in the human mind with the first one? To be sure, they would be neither connected with the first one nor with each other in any common point; but neither is this required, if they are to form many systems. Hence, if the impossibility of new discoveries is to be satisfactorily proven, it must be shown that only one system can be in human knowledge. Now, since the proposition that all human knowledge results only in one in itself connected knowledge—is itself to be a component of human knowledge—it can not be grounded upon any other principle than the one assumed as the fundamental principle of all human knowledge, and can only be proven by it. By this we have gained, at least for the present, so much that we see how such a future proposition as we supposed might possibly arise in consciousness would not only be another one, different from the fundamental principle of our system, but would also be contradictory of the latter in form. For, according to all we have said, the fundamental principle of our system must involve the proposition that there is a unit-system in human knowledge. Every proposition, therefore, which is not to belong to this system must not only be a different system, but must be a direct contradiction of it, in so far as the former system asserts itself to be the only possible one. It must be a contradiction of the deduced proposition of the unity of the system; and, since all its propositions are inseparably connected, of each single theorem, and particularly of the fundamental principle thereof Hence, it would have to rest on a fundamental principle directly opposed to the first fundamental principle. If, for instance, the first fundamental principle should turn out to be: I am I; this second one would have to be: I am not I.
Now, it would be wrong to conclude from this contradiction the impossibility of such a second fundamental principle. If the first fundamental principle involves the proposition that the system of human knowledge is a unit, it involves also, it is true, that nothing must contradict this system. But both these propositions are merely deductions from the first fundamental principle, and hence, by accepting the absolute validity of the deductions, we already assume that itself is the absolute first and only fundamental principle of human knowledge. Here, therefore, is a circle which the human mind can never get out of; and it is well to confess this circle plainly, lest its unexpected discovery at some time might confound men. This circle is as follows: If the proposition X is the first, highest, and absolute fundamental principle of human knowledge, then there is in human knowledge a unit-system, for the latter is the result of the proposition X. Now, since there is to be in human knowledge a unit-system, the proposition X, which really does establish such a system, is the fundamental principle of human knowledge, and the system based upon it is that unit-system of human knowledge.
It is unnecessary to be surprised at this circle. For to demand that it should be annihilated is to demand that human knowledge should be utterly groundless, that there should be no absolute certainty, and that all human knowledge should be only conditioned; in short, it is to assert that there is no immediate truth at all, but only mediated truth, and this without any thing whereby it is mediated. Whosoever feels thereunto inclined may investigate as much as he pleases what he would know if his Ego were not Ego; that is, if he did not exist, and if he could not distinguish a Non-Ego from his Ego.
We discovered above (§ 3) that one and the same proposition could not be in the same respect a proposition of the science of knowledge and of a particular science; and that to be the latter, it would be necessary to have something added to it. This character which is to be added can only be derived from the science of knowledge, since it contains all possible human knowledge; but can not, as is evident, be contained in that science in the same proposition which is to become fundamental principle of the particular science. Hence, it must be, perhaps, contained in another separate proposition of the science of knowledge, which is connected with the proposition which is to become the fundamental principle of a particular science. Since we have here to meet an objection which does not arise from the conception of the science of knowledge itself, but merely from the presupposition that there exist also other separate sciences, we can meet it also only by a presupposition, and shall have done enough for the present if we but show a possibility of the required limitation. That it will be the true limitation—although it may, nevertheless, turn out so—we neither care nor need to prove here.
Let it be, therefore, assumed that the science of knowledge contains those determined acts of the human mind which it—be it conditioned or unconditioned—enacts necessarily and under compulsion; but that it posits at the same time, as the highest explanatory ground of those necessary acts, a power to determine itself, (absolutely and without compulsion or necessity:) to act generally. Under this assumption the science of knowledge will result in a necessary and a not necessary or free acting. The acts of the human mind, in so far as it acts necessarily, will be determined by the science, but not in so far as it acts free.
Let it be further assumed that the free acts also are to be determined from some reason or another; then this determination can not occur in the science of knowledge. But since it is a determining, it must occur in sciences; hence in particular sciences. The object of these free acts can be no other than the necessary, furnished by the science of knowledge, since it furnishes every thing and since it furnishes only the necessary. Hence, in the fundamental principle of a particular science, an act which the science of knowledge left free would be determined. The science of knowledge would thus give to the act, that is, to the fundamental principle, firstly, its necessary character, and, secondly, freedom generally; but the particular science would give that freedom its determination; and thus the sharply drawn line of limitation would have been discovered. As soon as an in itself free act receives a determined direction, we leave the field of the science of knowledge generally, and enter the field of a particular science.
I shall illustrate this by two examples: The science of knowledge furnishes, as necessary, space, and, as absolute limit, the point; but it leaves imagination perfectly free to posit the point wherever it chooses. As soon as this freedom is determined, for example, to move the point against the limit of the unlimited space, and thus to draw a line,A question for mathematicians. Does not the conception of a line involve already the conception of straightness? Are there other lines than straight ones? And is the so-called curved line any thing but a combination of infinitely many and infinitely close connected points? The origin of the curved line as the line of limitation of the infinite space (from the Ego as central point an infinite manifold of infinite radii are drawn, to which our limited imagination posits an end-point, and these end-points, when thought as one, are the original line of the circle) seems to guarantee this; and from this it becomes clear that and why the problem of measuring it by a straight line is an infinite problem. It also appears from this why the straight line can not be defined. we are no longer on the field of the science of knowledge, but on the field of a particular science, which is called geometry. The general problem, to limit space in accordance with a rule, or the construction in space, is fundamental principle of geometry, which science is thus clearly divided from the science of knowledge. Again: the science of knowledge furnishes as necessary a nature which, in its being and determinations, is to be considered as independent of us; and also furnishes as necessary the laws, according to which nature is to be and must be observed.Curious as it may appear to many explorers of nature, it will nevertheless show itself to be the strict truth, that they themselves first put the laws into nature which they believe to have learned from her, and that the smallest as well as the most extensive law the structure of a leaf of grass as well as the motion of the heavenly bodies, can be deduced in advance of all observation from the fundamental principle of all human knowledge. It is true that no law of nature, and indeed no law whatever, arises to our consciousness, unless an object is given to which it can be applied; it is true that not all objects necessarily, and not all objects in the same degree, must or can agree with the laws; but for that very reason is it true that we do not learn them from observation, but posit them as the ground of all observation, and that they are not so much laws of independent nature as laws for ourselves how we have to observe nature. But our power of judgment retains its full freedom to apply these laws or not, or to apply whatever law it chooses to any possible object; (for instance, to regard the human body as inorganic, or as organic, or as living matter.) But as soon as the power of judgment is required to observe a determined object by a determined law, (for instance, whether animal life can be explained from the mere inorganic; whether crystallization be the transition from chemical connections to organization; whether magnetic and electric powers are the same or not, etc.,) then it is no longer free, but obeys a rule; and hence we are no longer in the science of knowledge, but on the field of another science, which is called the science of nature. The general rule, to subsume every object of experience under a given law of nature in our mind, is fundamental principle of the science of nature. That science consists throughout of experiments, (not of a passive reception of the lawless influences of nature upon us,) which are arbitrarily undertaken, and with which nature may correspond or not; and by this characteristic the science of nature is abundantly separated from the science of knowledge.
Here, therefore, is already clearly seen why only the science of knowledge can have absolute totality, and why all particular sciences must be infinite. The science of knowledge contains only the necessary; if this is necessary in every respect, it is necessary also in respect to quantity, that is, it is necessarily limited. All other sciences are based upon freedom, freedom of our mind as well as of the absolutely independent nature. If this is to be truly freedom, subject to no law, it is impossible to prescribe for them a limited sphere, since this could only be done by a law. Hence, their spheres are infinite. Let no one, therefore, apprehend danger from an exhaustive science of knowledge for the infinite perfectibility of the human mind; on the contrary, instead of canceling that infinite perfectibility, the science of knowledge rather secures it against all doubt, and assigns to it a problem which can not be completed in all eternity, The science of knowledge is to determine the form for all possible sciences. According to current opinion, in which there may be something true, logic does the very same thing. How are these two sciences related to each other, particularly in respect to this problem, which each claims to solve?
By remembering that logic only pretends to determine the form of all possible sciences, whereas the science of knowledge is also to determine their content, an easy way is discovered to enter into this important investigation. In the science of knowledge the form is never separated from the content, nor the content from the form. In each of its propositions both form and content are inseparably united. If the propositions of logic are therefore to contain merely the form of possible sciences, they are not propositions of the science of knowledge; and hence the whole science of logic is not science of knowledge, nor even part of it. Curious as it may sound at the present state of philosophy, the science of logic is no philosophical science at all, but a peculiar, separate science; a fact, however, which is not to disparage the dignity of that science.
If the science of logic is such a separate science, it must be possible to show a determination of freedom by means of which the science of logic arises from the science of knowledge, and the limit of both may be ascertained. Such a determination of freedom is indeed clearly to be pointed out. In the science of knowledge, as we have said, form and content are necessarily united. Logic is to represent the pure form apart from the content; and this separation of form and content can only—since it is not an original separation—occur through freedom. Hence, it is by the free separation of form from the content that logic arises as a science. Such a separation is called abstraction; and hence logic consists essentially in abstraction from all content of the science of knowledge.
In this manner the propositions of logic would be merely form, which is impossible, for the conception of a proposition involves (see § 1) that it have both form and content. Hence, that which in the science of knowledge is mere form must be content in logic, and this content must again receive the general form of the science of knowledge, but which is now thought as the form of a logical proposition. This second act of freedom, whereby the form becomes its own content and returns into itself, is called reflection. No abstraction is possible without reflection, and no reflection without abstraction. Both acts, considered separately, are acts of freedom; and when, in this same separation, they are placed in relation to each other, one of them is necessarily the condition of the other. But in synthetical thinking both are only one and the same act, viewed from two sides.
From this results the determined relation of logic to the science of knowledge. The former is not the ground of the latter; but the latter is the ground of the former. The science of knowledge can not be proven from the science of logic, and no logical proposition, not even the proposition of contradiction, must be accepted in advance as valid by the science of knowledge; but, on the contrary, every logical proposition and the whole science of logic must be proven from the science of knowledge. It must be shown that all the forms contained in logic are really forms of a certain content in the science of knowledge. Thus, logic derives its validity from the science of knowledge, and not the science of knowledge its validity from logic.
Again, the science of knowledge is not conditioned and determined by logic, but logic is conditioned and determined by the science of knowledge. The science of knowledge does not derive its form from logic, but has that form in itself. On the contrary, the science of knowledge conditions the validity and applicability of logical propositions. The forms which logic establishes must, in the common way of thinking, and in all particular sciences, be applied to no other content than that which they are confined to in the science of knowledge; not necessarily to the whole of that content—for then we should have no particular sciences—but at least to what is part of that content. Without this condition the particular science to which such forms were applied would only be an air castle, however correct its logical deductions might be.
Finally, the science of knowledge is necessary; not necessary exactly in so far as it is a clearly conceived and systematically arranged science, but at least necessary as a natural gift; while logic is an artificial product of the human mind in its freedom. Without the former, no knowledge and no science would be possible; without the latter, all sciences would have been much later developed. The former is the exclusive condition of all science; the latter is a very beneficial invention to secure and facilitate the progress of sciences.
Let me exemplify this: A = A is undoubtedly a correct logical proposition, and in so far as it is this it signifies: If A is posited, then A is posited. Two questions arise here: Is A really posited? and in how far and why is A posited if it is posited, or how are the if and the then connected?
Let us assume that A in this proposition signifies I, (Ego,) and that it has, therefore, its determined content, then the proposition would be this: I am I; or, if I am posited, then I am posited. But since the subject of this proposition is the absolute subject, in this single case the content is posited at the same time with the form; I am posited, because I have posited myself I am because I am. Hence, logic says: If A is, then A is; but the science of knowledge says: Because A (that is, this particular A = Ego) is, therefore A is. And thus the question: Is A (this particular A) really posited? is answered thus: It is posited, since it is posited. It is unconditionally and absolutely posited.
Let us assume that in the above proposition A does not signify I, (Ego,) but something else, then the condition can be clearly realized, under which it would be possible to answer: A is posited; and how we can be justified in drawing the conclusion: If A is posited, then it is posited. For the proposition A = A is valid originally only for the Ego; it has been abstracted from the proposition of the science of knowledge, I am I. Hence, all the content, to which it is to be applicable, must be contained in the Ego. No A can, therefore, be any thing else but an A posited in the Ego; and now the proposition reads: Whatsoever is posited in the Ego is posited; if A is posited in the Ego, then it is posited, (that is, in so far as it is posited as possible, actual, or necessary;) and thus the proposition is shown to be true, beyond contradiction, if the Ego is to be Ego. Again, if the Ego is posited because it is posited, then every thing which is posited in the Ego is posited because it is posited; and if A alone is posited in the Ego, then it is posited if it is posited; and thus our second question is also answered.
Let us first premise that this question has hitherto been utterly abstracted from, and that hence all the foregoing must be modified by the answering of this question.
Every proposition in the science of knowledge has form and content; something is known, and there is something whereof is known. But the science of knowledge is itself the science of something, and not this something itself. This would seem to prove that the science of knowledge, with all its propositions, is form of a content which existed in advance of it. How, then, is it related to this content, and what follows from this relation?
The object of the science of knowledge, we have seen, is the system of human knowledge. This exists independently of the science of it, and the science only shapes it into systematic form. What, then, may this new form be, how is it distinguished from the form which must exist in advance of the science, and how is the science generally distinguished from its object?
Whatever exists in the human mind, independently of science, we may also call the acts of that mind. These acts are the What which exists; they occur in a certain determined manner, and by this determined manner are they distinguished from each other. This is the How of the What. Hence, there is in the human mind originally, and in advance of our knowledge, form and content, and both are inseparably united; each act occurs in a determined manner, in accordance with a law, and this law determines the act. Nay, there may be, even for an outside observer, a system in these acts, if they are mutually connected with each other, and if they follow general, particular, and specific laws.
But it is not at all necessary that they should actually occur (that is, in time) in that systematic form which the outside observer frames in positing them as dependent on each other; it is not at all necessary, for instance, that the act which comprises all others, and which furnishes the highest universal law, should actually occur first in our mind, and be followed by the one next in importance; not necessary at all that they should all occur in a pure and unmixed state, or that many of them might not appear as one. Let us assume, for instance, that the highest act of the Intelligence be this: to posit itself. It is not at all necessary that this act should be in time the first act of our mind which arises to clear consciousness; nor is it even necessary that it should ever occur in consciousness in its purity; that is, that the Intelligence should ever be able to think simply I am, without, at the same time, thinking another, which is Not I.
Now, herein lies the whole content of a possible science of knowledge, but not that science itself. In order to build up this science we need a new act of the human mind, not contained in all its other acts, namely, the power to become conscious of its manner of acting generally. And since this act is not to be contained in all the other acts, which are all necessary, and which are all the necessary acts, it must be an act of freedom. Hence, the science of knowledge, in so far as it is to be a systematic science, is built up in the same manner in which all possible sciences, in so far as they are to be systematic, are built up, that is, through a determination of freedom; which freedom is in the science of knowledge particularly determined: to become conscious of the general manner of acting of the intelligence. Hence, the science of knowledge is distinguished from other sciences only in this, that the object of the latter sciences is itself a free act, while the objects of the science of knowledge are necessary acts.
Now, by means of this free act, something, which is in itself already form, namely, the necessary act of the intelligence, is taken up as content and put into a new form, that is, the form of knowledge or of consciousness; and hence that free act is an act of reflection. Those necessary acts are separated from the order in which they may occur perchance, and are thus separated each free from all mixture; hence, that act is also an act of abstraction. It is impossible to reflect unless you have abstracted.
The form of the consciousness, wherein the necessary and general manner of acting of the intelligence is to be received, undoubtedly belongs itself to the necessary modes of acting of the intelligence. Hence, the manner of acting of the intelligence will undoubtedly be received in that consciousness like all its other contents; and the question whence the science of knowledge is ever to get this form would thus appear to involve no difficulty. But, if we escape the difficulty in the question about the form, the whole difficulty centres in the question about the content. If the necessary manner of acting of the intelligence is to be received into the form of consciousness, it must be already known as such, and hence must have already been received into this form. We are clearly in a circle.
This manner of acting is to be separated, according to the above, by a reflecting abstraction, abstracting from all that this manner of acting is not. This abstraction occurs through freedom, and in it the philosophizing judgment is not led by a blind compulsion. The whole difficulty, therefore, centres in this question: What rules does freedom follow in that separation? or how does the philosopher know what he is to accept as the necessary manner of acting of the intelligence, and what he is to pass by as accidental?
Now, this he can not possibly know, unless that which he is first to become conscious of is already in consciousness, which is a contradiction. There is, therefore, and can be, no rule for this procedure. The human mind makes many attempts; by blindly groping it first discovers dawn, and only from dawn does it emerge to the light of day. At first it is led by dark feelings,Hence it follows that the philosopher requires the dim feelings of the true, or requires genius in no less degree than the poet or the artist, only it is a genius of another kind. The artist requires the sense of beauty, the philosopher the sense of truth. (the origin and reality of which the science of knowledge has to show up;) and if we had not begun to feel dimly what afterward we plainly recognized, we should be to-day yet the same lump of clay which arose from the earth, lacking all clear conceptions. This indeed the history of philosophy fully proves; and we have now stated the true ground why that which lies open in every human mind, and which every one can grasp with his hands, if it is clearly exposed to him, could only arise to the consciousness of a few, after much straying into error. All philosophers have proposed to themselves this same object, all have attempted to separate by reflection the necessary manner of acting of the intelligence from its accidental conditions; all have thus separated it more or less purely and perfectly; and, on the whole, the philosophizing judgment has steadily